Before Clemens, Oil Can was Boston's ace
It’s been 20 years since Dennis “Oil
Can” Boyd pitched in the big leagues, but he can still bring some
heat when it comes to conversation.
I met up with Boyd for a book signing
at New England Mobile Book Fair in Newton, Mass., last weekend, and
then stayed after for a few hours to talk with one of my all-time
favorite Red Sox pitchers. His book, They Call Me Oil Can (written
with Mike Shalin) is a no-holds-barred, colorful look at his
career and life, and he's just as open – and outspoken – in
person as in print.
From our chat, here are the Can’s
reflections on…
How he got his nickname: “Everybody
says it's because I drank a lot of beer and they called beer “oil”
down in Mississippi, but that's not true. It was rot-gut whiskey.
Everybody in Meridian, where I grew up, drank it. You got it from a
lady up the street named Big Mama, who was the neighborhood
moonshiner. I used to go up to her house and fetch it for my mother,
sneaking it into our house under my shirt so my father wouldn't see
it.
“When
I was 7, I started drinking some myself. One day somebody caught us
in a tin shed drinking Big Mama's whiskey out of oil cans, so my
friend Pap started calling me “Oil Can.” I wrote it under the
bill of my baseball cap, and my high school teammates started calling
me that too. It stuck.”
Bobby Valentine: “I played
for Bobby in Texas, and he’s a good guy. He’s open and will talk
straight to you. He could be temperamental, sure, but he’s a very,
very smart baseball man. He knows games and respects players, but
he’s the skipper. Ballplayers should'n’t be telling him what to
do. Your job as a player is to hit the ball or catch the ball; he
manages and you play. When you make up all kinds of distractions,
this is what happens – the team can’t win. They got the talent,
but they never listened to the man.”
Wade Boggs (who Boyd claims often
directed racial slurs at him when they were teammates): “He’s
a bigot; it’s ingrained in his family history. Coming from Central
Florida, that’s just what you grow up hearing and learning. He was
protected by baseball then, and nobody will say anything against him
now. The Red Sox don’t invite me to anything that Wade is going to
be at because they know I’ll kick his ass. He wasn’t at the 100th
anniversary celebration, right? I was – so there you go.”
For much of 1986, The Can was The Man.
The summer of 1986 (when he was
suspended for 21 games after briefly quitting the team following an
All-Star snub, but still went 16-10 to help the Red Sox win the
pennant): “Being a young
ballplayer, with money in your pocket, makes you very vulnerable.
There were a lot of distractions and a lot of ways to get into
trouble. I found them. It was my fault, sure, but I felt there was
nobody I could talk to about it. Still, people looked out for me; I
lived in Chelsea, and sometimes I'd be out late at night and the
police would come and say, “C'mon, Oil Can, you don't want to be
messing around here, you can get shot or killed,” and they would
give me an escort home.
“While
I was suspended I hurt my arm in a tussle with some cops; they
thought I was getting drugs from a guy and really roughed me up good.
I would ice my arm every day, but it always hurt. I could hear a
clicking in it. But still I kept pitOil Caching, winning the [AL East]
clincher against the Blue Jays and through the playoffs and World
Series. I didn't tell anybody about the pain.”
During the '86 postseason, Boyd gets his views heard.
On not starting Game 7 of the '86
World Series, when, after a rainout, manager John MacNamara decided
to go with Bruce Hurst and skip over Boyd:
“When it came time for Game 7, and he [MacNamara] told me I wasn't
starting, I didn't know what to say. I just ran off and cried. They
used the rain as an excuse, and said Bruce had the hot hand, but I
felt that circumstances during the season led to that decision. They
put their personal feelings about me ahead of the team. They were not
going to take a chance on my going out there and winning the World
Series after everything that went on. [Hurst,
who had already won twice in the Series, pitched six innings and left
with the game tied 3-3. Boston relievers broke down, however, and the
Mets won, 8-5. Boyd never got into the contest.]
How he stayed focused on the mound:
“I smoked dope –
every day. I started when I was 12 and never hid it. I was such a
thinker, my mind was never idle, but when I smoked I got locked in. I
was so focused, I couldn't hear anything else on the field. I became
creative, like an artist doing a painting. A little blue here, a
little red there; a curve ball here, a slider there. It got to the
point where [first baseman] Billy Buckner would come over and say,
“Are you high?” If I wasn't, he'd say “go get him some.”
Boyd was clearly upset as he talked
about how things went after '86, when a blood disorder required him
to inject a needle with blood thinners into his stomach every day. He
was on the disabled list much of the time, and after 1989 signed with
the Expos as a free agent. He rebounded to pitch nearly 200 innings
each of the next two seasons – often very effectively – but after
a trade to Texas and a late-season slump in 1991 was unable to find
another big league job at age 31.
The Spaceman (left) and Oil Can trade pointers.
Oil Can felt he had been blackballed,
and I realized he had a lot in common with another great
free-spirited Red Sox who could pitch and talk up a storm: Bill
“Spaceman” Lee. Both men liked their weed, both men were
passionate, personable ballplayers embraced by teammates and fans,
and both had their careers in Boston end on a down note before a
brief resurgence in Montreal. Both felt the baseball establishment
kept them from staying on in the majors, and they had two of the
greatest – and most famous – nicknames in big league history.
The Can seems at peace with himself
these days. After a decade where he said anger over his shortish MLB
career forced an estrangement from his wife and two kids, along with
a bad cocaine habit, he's quit hard drugs and is back with his family
and running the Oil Can Boyd School of Baseball in Providence, Rhode
Island.
Two authors hook up at the Mobile Book Fair in Newton.
He does some private coaching with high
school teams as well, along with an occasional event for the Jimmy
Fund or other charity. And while he rarely gets to Fenway, he was
back for the 100th anniversary celebration in April and
got a terrific hand from the crowd when introduced. That meant a lot
to him.
“I fight every day not to go out and
get drugs, but it's a private fight,” he told me. “I don't call
it being clean, I call it being tolerant. I stay healthy, and I'm on
a baseball field seven days a week. That's where I feel the most
comfortable.”
That's one more thing he and the
Spaceman have in common: both are still pitching. Lee has hurled in a
variety of leagues through the years, and this summer, at age 65,
became the oldest man in history to win a professional game when he
went all nine innings for his hometown San Rafael Pacifics of the
North American League in a 9-4 victory over Maui.
Boyd, who moved back to New England
just in time for the wonderful Red Sox summer of 2004 , now lives in
Providence and pitches with teams in two divisions of the Men's
Senior Baseball League – one for age 35-and-up, the other for
48-and-up. He's still lean and spry a few weeks short of his 53rd
birthday, and says he plays shortstop when not on the mound.
“I gotta go work out, I'm pitching
tomorrow,” he told me with a smile as he left the Mobile Book Fair.
I thanked him for the time, and all the joy he gave Red Sox fans back
in the mid-'80s. It was fun to watch him then, and fun to talk to him
now.
